Golding Contractors deliver safe, flexible and cost-effective project solutions in urban, regional and remote locations for the resources, utilities, property and transport sectors.
Over the past decade, Golding Contractors has delivered in excess of $5 billion worth of civil, mining and urban development projects.
Established in 1942, Golding Contractors has grown into a national enterprise with operations in key states across Australia.
To learn more, visit: http://www.golding.com.au/
Golding’s mining operations engage skilled workers typically on four-panel, rotating rosters. Many of these workers commute to and from these mines from areas outside the local community and are often housed in camp accommodation.
Travel arrangements include:
Fly in, Fly out
Bus in, Bus out
Drive in, Drive out
To respond quickly and decisively to factors such as inter-regional travel and camp-based accommodation presented a considerable challenge for Golding; in the face of a rapidly changing situation with the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Existing workforce communication methods were insufficient to disseminate important information and updates quickly and receive consistent responses to those communications.
To reduce the risk of transmission of Covid-19 through the inter-regional movement of workers, Golding determined there was a need to introduce ‘point of departure’ screening. If an employee had Covid-19, performing screening when they arrived for their first shift was too late.
To achieve this, Golding required a flexible tool that was direct and accurate in its message delivery and circumvented the need for using email; which was cumbersome and less effective. The solution required simplicity and immediate familiarity, and there was no time for training.
“We had already mobilised extensive communications and operational response, but we needed a tool to streamline the process.The beauty of an SMS is that it captures the attention of the individual far more than an email, but still gives us access to rich content, and controlled and collated data collection for administration and record-keeping.”
– Dom Johnston, IT Manager, Golding Contractors
The Whispir platform was leveraged to fill the communication needs created by COVID-19. The immediate need was for point of departure health screening, prior to workers commencing travel and prior to them arriving in camp or at the site.
Golding sought to extend the Whispir platform across their organisation, modifying it slightly across each location to meet the specific requirements of the site or client. Additional use cases were identified along the way including:
One-off data collection of travel arrangements for workers
Pre-travel risk screening and health declarations
Crisis communications
Safety messaging including rich email & SMS
Outbound messaging for external stakeholders
Targeted communications for specific groups via detailed tagging of contacts at an individual level
Golding achieved its intended results in close collaboration with Whispir.
Their success factors were:
Timely account activation; rollout and delivery
Rapid development and deployment of customised messages
Two-way information flow and inbuilt reporting capability
Sufficient platform capacity for 400+ network users
Extended, flexible capacity for 2000+ non-network users (wages staff & contract labour-hire)
System capability to collate and manage multi-channel contact details
The Whispir solution was able to be scoped and developed to provide Golding with the means to deploy an appropriate and effective communication response within days.
“We can now capture, of the 400 people we sent messages to, those that are at elevated risk of infection with COVID-19, those who aren’t and those we need to follow up with to clarify any outstanding information requirements.
Because of the in-depth reporting and dynamic use cases, we have been able to expand Whispir across multiple divisions within our organisation.”
– Dom Johnston, IT Manager, Golding Contractors
The Whispir Platform allowed Golding to obtain timely and actionable insights into staff movements and associated risk factors. This information assisted Golding’s business operations to remain largely uninterrupted during the height of the initial pandemic threat and escalating government responses.
Importantly, administrators were also able to identify who had not received communications and rapidly close any communication gaps and to ensure contact lists were up-to-date.
Beyond the COVID-19 use cases for the Whispir platform, Golding seeks to deploy Whispir into other crucial areas of the organisation. Find out more by downloading the full case study.
